“As a former prosecutor who was appointed by President George W. Bush on
Sept. 10, 2001, I just want us to be really cautious, because this strain of
libertarianism that’s going through both parties right now and making big headlines,
I think, is a very dangerous thought.”

Asked if he was referring to Senator Rand Paul, Christie said he is “one of
them," and went on to sneer:

“You can name any one of them that’s engaged in this. These esoteric, intellectual
debates – I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and
the orphans and have that conversation. And they won’t, because that’s a much
tougher conversation to have.”

It’s funny how specific word choices lay bare our souls: "Dangerous thought,"
eh? This is precisely what those NSA "analysts" trolling our emails,
our phone conversations, and God knows what else are looking for – dangerous
thoughts that might conceivably (or inconceivably) lead to dangerous actions.
In short, they look for evidence of thoughtcrime, to use a phrase from
George Orwell’s classic dystopia, Nineteen
Eighty-Four. And, of course, Sen. Paul has committed the one thoughtcrime
punishable by political execution: he’s talking about the importance of liberty as the foundation of our society.

In Christie’s case, it’s not surprising the Governor thinks the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution is "esoteric": New Jersey cops are among the worstviolators
of our constitutional rights, second only to that bastion of East Coast "liberalism,"
New York City, where "walking while black" is liable to get you stopped,
searched, and quite possibly arrested. The New Jersey Supreme Court – no doubt
filled with egghead intellectuals interested only in "esoteric debates"
– recently
admonished the Governor’s police force for routinely violating the Fourth
Amendment.

It’s also not too surprising given what we know about Christie’s presidential
ambitions and his high profile supporters and potential donors. As Dave Weigel
points out:

"The donor class that wanted Christie, settled for Romney, and wants
Christie again needs a candidate who’ll slash at regulation in office and come
off patriotic (and pro-Israel) enough to actually get into office. There’s plenty
of overlap with
the conservative hawks who can feel the movement shifting away from
them."

And it is shifting away at a remarkable pace – not only in the population as
a whole, but specifically within the GOP. A recent Pew poll has significantly
more Republicans than Democrats opposing the surveillance methods exposed by
Edward Snowden – and a clear majority saying the government is lying when they
claim it’s all about preventing "terrorism." Not only that, but it
is insurgent Republicans, like Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, who are leading
the charge against the Surveillance State. This mortifies members of the "donor
class," such as Sheldon Adelson and Paul Singer, whose main concern is
the "security" of Israel (and, in Singer’s case, the crying need for
gay marriage).

In making his case at Aspen, Christie averred President Obama hadn’t changed
the surveillance programs put in place by George W. Bush "because they
worked," yet he was careful to be specific in saying no terrorist attacks
claiming "thousands of lives" have occurred – because, after all,
the Boston massacre carried out by the Tsarnaev brothers is still fresh in our
memory, along with all the other singletonterroristincidents which have occurred
since 9/11 – and since the Panopticon has been in place. Which points to the
empirical weak link – or one of them – in Christie’s emotion-laden demagogy:
even with all that "intelligence" vacuumed up by the NSA, and
an explicit warning from the Russians about Tamerlane Tsarnaev, terrorists succeeded
in closing down a major American city for 48 hours after murdering three and
wounding hundreds.

Which brings us to a little-discussed but glaringly obvious problem with the
rationale for all-pervasive surveillance, given voice by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-
Oceania)
when he compared the hunt for terrorists to finding a needle in a haystack:
"You need the whole haystack," he insists. But this is nonsensical:
it might be too much to expect a member of Congress to be familiar with the
work of libertarian economist Friedrich Hayek, but the impossibility of sifting
through the entire haystack in order to find a few needles should be obvious
to a child, albeit a mystery to the average legislator. What Hayekians call
the "knowledge problem" – that there is simply too much information
out there for economic planners to integrate into their decisions – applies
equally to law enforcement. To know everything is to know nothing, in this regard,
because it’s impossible to know which particular facts are relevant.

This is where the "dangerous thoughts" come in: since the enormity of what the government has stored in those NSA databases is inherently unmanageable,
the only way to navigate it is to separate it out in the broadest categories.
A grandma emailing her grandchildren is of no value to our vaunted anti-terrorist
"analysts" – but that email you wrote to your brother about the criminality of the Afghan war, and the heroism of Bradley Manning, is possibly of interest.
When we are told by Senator Wyden that we’d be "surprised" and even
shocked at the degree and nature of the surveillance, and by Guardian reporter
Glenn Greenwald – whose reporting unveiled the NSA documents secured by Snowden
– that more revelations are forthcoming, it’s not hard to imagine what the NSA’s
surveillance techniques amount to. Greenwald has already given us a preview:

"The NSA has trillions of telephone calls and emails in their databases
that they’ve collected over the last several years. What these programs are,
are very simple screens, like the ones that supermarket clerks or shipping and
receiving clerks use, where all an analyst has to do is enter an email address
or an IP address, and it does two things … It searches that database and lets
them listen to the calls or read the emails of everything that the NSA has stored,
or look at the browsing histories or Google search terms that you’ve entered,
and it also alerts them to any further activity that people connected to that
email address or that IP address do in the future. It’s an incredibly powerful
and invasive tool, exactly of the type Mr. [Edward] Snowden described.”

While it’s true that the entire NSA program requires periodic approval from
a secret "court," government spies can target Americans “with no need
to go to a court [and] with no need to even get supervisor approval on the part
of the analyst," says Greenwald. "These systems allow analysts to
listen to whatever emails they want, whatever – telephone calls, browsing histories,
Microsoft Word documents."

On what basis – by what standard – do these spies make the determination to
read a particular target’s emails, and listen in on their phone calls? Surely
by searching for certain words and phrases deemed suspect. What these "analysts"
are analyzing is, in part, the ideological proclivities of those they are surveilling.
Furthermore, given the Knowledge Problem, it is no doubt necessary to categorize
the entire population: there is simply no other way of sifting out the malign
minority from the harmless majority. Given the number of Americans on the no-fly
list – and the much bigger Terrorist Watch List – it’s plain to see the pool
of suspects is enormous, and getting bigger all the time. How do you get on
that list? By having what Gov. Christie calls "dangerous thoughts."
How many Americans are on that list – and how many entirely innocent non-citizens?
Big Brother isn’t telling – but the American people want to know.

Gov. Christie, on the other hand, doesn’t want us to know anything – and is
perfectly content with the government knowing everything. In this he is out
of step with the grassroots of his party, and with the American people as a
whole.

"I didn’t start this one and I don’t plan on starting things by criticizing
other Republicans," says Sen. Paul, "but if they want to make me the
target, they will get it back in spades." And the Senator is keeping his
promise: in an interview with a particularly nasty Wolf Blitzer, Paul dubbed
Christie “the king of bacon,” and accurately identified the source of hostility
to libertarian Republicans:

“It’s the tax-and-spend liberal wing of the Republican Party. They’re all
for blowing up stuff, they’re all for getting involved in wars, but they’re
not too concerned with fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets.”

Standing behind these bomb-happy Republicans are what Weigel calls the donor
class, the Republican kingmakers – and the Democratic ones, too – who are united
in their contempt for libertarianism, and the anti-authoritarian alliance emerging
at the grassroots. Christie’s is only the latest attack on Sen. Paul and libertarianism
in general: the donor class’s pet pundits having been working overtime recently,
churning out jeremiads against both Paul and libertarians in general – and it’s
hard to say whether the smears are coming faster and meaner from the left or
the right. Mostly these screeds are simply dishonest, like Michael Lind’s latest,
which pretends to debunk the concept of "libertarian populism" without
reference either to the NSA brouhaha or the vital issue of war and peace – two
linked questions which have catapulted the libertarian movement into the very
center of the national discourse.

It was Lind, after all, who wrote a very good piece on "How
Neoconservatives Conquered Washington – And Launched A War," which
we reprinted on this web site. The foundations of the Surveillance State were
laid by the neocons, who were in the saddle during the Bush II era, precisely in anticipation of the "blowback" we would experience after their
plan for the conquest of the Middle East was executed. That this was built up
into a full-blown "architecture of oppression" – as Snowden describes
it – during the reign of Obama has the king’s journalistic courtiers, Lind
among them, in a panic. The more liberal ones, such as inhabit the pages of
Salon, can’t openly support this, so instead they take on the system’s most
effective enemies – libertarians.

The pro-Obama "progressives" over at Salon and the upfront warmongers
who inhabit such precincts as the Weekly Standard and the Washington
Free Beacon are the left and right wings of a Grand Anti-Libertarian Alliance.
The latter recently came out with a phony charge of "racism" against
Paul aide Jack Hunter, a person with whom I often disagreed but who is surely
no bigot by any rational definition of the term. This was meant as bait for
the left to take up the anti-Paul jihad, and they did not disappoint. Their
goal: to isolate and marginalize champions of liberty like Sen. Paul and Rep.
Amash, and make us choose – come election day – between variants of incipient
authoritarianism. There are few certainties in life, but my instincts tell me
we don’t have long to wait for the Free Beacon to come out with a screed "proving"
Amash (of Palestinian heritage) is a "Friend of Hamas." Indeed, the Israel
Firsters have already begun the assault on Sen. Paul: apparently his earlier pilgrimage to the Motherland was insufficiently appeasing.

The Establishment – both "right" and "left" wings of it
– is scared to death of libertarians, and with good reason. We are the only
organized tendency in American political life ideologically and politically
situated to take on the emerging police state that is strangling what’s left
of the Founders’ vision. And we are growing by the day, by the hour, which is
why their fear is so well-founded. So to the Governor of New Jersey – whose
presidential aspirations are likely to wind up in the trashbin of history along
with those of his doppelganger, Rudy Giuliani – we libertarians have this to
say: Bring it on, Fatso – bring it on!

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here.
But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often
made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.

If allowed to sit across the table from the people in Jersey and their Governor Chris Christie I would ask them what they think about Obama and most of congress sending aid to the al-Qaeda side of the Syrian civil war. Including shoulder fired heat seeking missiles designed to bring down large air craft.

Great essay Justin: The coming civil war in the Republican Party can't come soon enough for me. It isn't only the libertarians who are disgusted. It is a lot of paleo conservatives like me as well. To quote a certain dim wit. " Bring it on. "

I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation. And they won’t, because that’s a much tougher conversation to have.”

The 9-11 guys where all foreigners who were allowed into the USA by globalists like Christie. Yet he blames those who wish to preserve our Constitutional rights as being the ones responsible.

Christie et al would rather destroy our Constitutional rights then curtail their support for open borders. As General Casey said about the Ft. Hood shooting, "And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse."

The 9-11 widows and orphans should be upset, but not at libertarians. Rather they should be upset at those who opened the doors to their nation to the riffraff of the world.

as for Christy, he's a fat, bloated mess of a human being. looking at him is to gaze into a metaphor of America itself: a morbidly obese, self aggrandizing phony who only cares about their next high calorie meal and inducing fear upon one another. this is the kind of guy that if George Washington was brought back to life, he'd punch him right in the face. his line about being appointed as a prosecuter by gwb is the moral and legal equivalent of saying "last night I stayed in a holiday inn". if this disgusting pig actually knew what freedom was he'd probably eat it.

and to Christy, please sit in front of the 911 families and tell them that they now have no liberty left because their families were murdered by people..wait..hold for it…who hated liberty. or more to the point that people like you believe they have the right to spy on us 24/7 forever. i'm sure every 911 survivor etc. is glad to have every shred of email, blogging, associations, phone calls, text messages and every thing they've bought, every place they've visited/gone to is compiled in a secret nsa database for review. ahh yes, so comforting that.

And by King of Bacon, he means bacon. This guy eats his weight in bacon by the day. Cut this guy's caloric in take by half or more and you would be able to fee the bottom fifth of the entire state of New Jersey. Two things about Gov. Christie of which we are certain. He's campaigning for the GOP presidential nomination and he doesn't ever miss a meal.

For Rand Paul to actually make it through the primary, I think he would need to put together a similar coalition GWB did his first run for office–which may be difficult considering the fact many 'Southern' Republicans, particularly "values voters" in that region, tend to be "big government" ("compassionate conservative") Republicans. Chris Christie is Rand Paul's least concern… All election races are about 'match ups' though…

The "American people" don't really care about a "police state"…the so-called "War on Drugs" proved that. We haven't reached the point where US Marines can hunt down suspected "terrorists" within the US as they once could with suspected drug dealers at the beginning of the 'WOD'….Why/how does the US Congress think that possession of $50 worth of Crack Cocaine on federal land justifies a minimum sentence of 5 years behind bars–do NOT pass GO…do NOT collect $200.00–no 'probation', no 'parole', no questions asked? And how many "crack heads" are really out there to seriously fear? Perhaps there is a super hybrid "crack head terrorist" who can detonate all the US' nukes within the nation and destroy the entire Country at one time?

Anyway…this all addresses the "symptoms"… This wouldn't be an 'issue' if there were no "terrorists" to actually fear… Which brings me to the bigger 'issue': Why is Obama currently openly supporting the terrorists…and why is virtually no one talking about it???

I'm a Jersey Boy and I confess to liking Christie prior to these comments, which are appalling and might well be crafted to make him a viable presidential candidate. But let's not get too carried away by Rand Paul, who is equally a manufactured product. In attacking Christie he said two things that we should all be concerned about on this website: he said that sending federal assistance to the northeast for Sandy damage is "bankrupting the government and not letting enough money be left over for national defense' and he also "dangerous is borrowing money from China to send to people who burn our flag." The "national defense" bit is a new line from Rand but he has been banging the "flag burning" drum for some time, with its implicit anti-Muslim message. Rand Paul is not even a shadow of what his father was, not really understanding what he is saying half the time, but that is no excuse and most of his foreign policy pronouncements are both ignorant and designed to appease the Israel Lobby.

I agree Bring it on fatso was a terrific title. Actually the conservative base hates Christie. If he is all the neocons and Republican elites have in there stable the future looks rosy. I expect Christie is just a stalking horse until they can find someone better.

I doubt the establishment is THAT scared. After all, if they're able to trick people into thinking that Rand Paul is a "libertarian," they've already won by contriving to not even have to fight the real thing.

I also am anti-libertarian and also anti-war. From long association, I believe that libertarianism sounds pro-individualistic and pro-liberty, but in practice it s adherents are mostly motivated by selfishness. With them it is the old, "what do I look like, my brother's keeper; my money is all mine and I don't care who starves in the streets, they are not getting any of mine." This juvenile attitude goes along with every libertarian platitude.
Graft some noblesse oblige onto libertarianism; add some empathy; and finally realize that to be a true "grown-up" in this world, you, yourself sometimes have to pick up the tab and then maybe, libertarianism will become a winning formula.

Excuse me? I judge Rand by what he says and does, not by what we hope might happen if he is elected POTUS. He might be the best of a bad bunch, but it's still a bad bunch. He wholeheartedly endorsed Romney's foreign policy, which included increased "defense" spending, and he now appears to have picked up that line himself. Either he is completely clueless about what he is saying or he doesn't stand for anything at all…

I'm mostly with RV on this one. I could find capital-L Libertarianism attractive if its adherents ever woke up and realized that unbridled capitalism can endanger individual liberties as surely as the State or state-sponsored religion can.

Please note I said "unbridled". I think the profit motive is much like fire.

Also, many of the "values voters" Ben C mentions are fundagelical rapture cultists who think blind support of the Holy Israeli Empire is the will of the Almighty, and so essential to both their individual salvations and the welfare of the USA.

Thus saith Justin: Indeed, the Israel Firsters have already begun the assault on Sen. Paul: apparently his earlier pilgrimage to the Motherland was insufficiently appeasing.

I'm old enough to remember how all Democrat presidential candidates had to make two pilgrimages to grovel before the party's top kingmakers — Chicago emperor Richard Daley, and the grand poobah of the AFL-CIO. Now candidates of both parties must travel to Israel in order to grovel before Nut-And-Yahoo and pledge allegiance to the Israeli flag. Just once I would like to see someone with the moral courage to reply to Bibi's demand for an audience with "צא להליכה ארוכה .במורד מזח קצר" (that's Hebrew for "Take a long walk down a short pier"). With CC's to AIPAC, CUFI and all the other fifth columnists, of course.

Several aspects of the soon-to-be-former USA will have future historians scratching their heads bald. One of them will be how the mightiest empire in history became the sock puppet of a tiny artificial country 1/3 of the way around the world on the east shore of the Mediterranean.

We are already there. A one party government with two wings that promote the same policy that is favored by a controlling oligarchy (donor class). The president has the power over life and death.

Rand tried to be all things to all people and by doing so he left himself open for attack on many fronts. It was obvious what line of attack Rand was going to receive by the Neocons and their fellow travelers in the Democrat party. He made it easy for them to smear him and divide the people he hasn't alienated yet.

"Compassionate conservative"? is there really such an animal? And " values voters", that is another laugh line. Southern Republican, "values voters" vote for values all right —- their values, thank-you very much — which are racist, capitalistic, and Israeli-centric.

Good point. I'd also ask them why everyone in the whole wide world should have their entire life monitored for the sake of a few widowns and orphans who acheive little objecive benefit from this anyway. Wait too harsh?

But it's all about that. Fine ask 9-11 widows and orphans what they think of it. But then you have to be consistent and ask an activist or a Muslim American who has been targeted at one point in their life by government overreach of all these Homeland and acronym departments what *they* think of government monitoring of everything.

I won't play your F'ed up sentimental game Christie, where only some victims are considered worthy. Yea I know it sells to much of dumb Amerika, full of sentimentally and empty of thought.

News flash: The Constitution is not a libertarian screed, and no amount of blather and money is going to "revise" that historical fact. If you folks are so worried about the "soon-to-be-former" USA, why not at least pretend to be alarmed by the corrupting consequences of unlimited money in our electoral politics. We've got self-described libertarians in the halls of congress, on the Supreme Court, and throughout the upper levels of our public and private institutions. Most of their seats were bought and paid for, but that is okay because the annihilation of democracy, apparently, is an acceptable cost to bear for the promotion and furtherance of individual liberty.

The country is becoming a dictatorship. I doubt the way to prevent it is finding new albiet controversial poltical idols with feet of clay to worship, that will somehow ride in and save us. If I lived in Rand Paul's state I would take seriously the decision whether to vote for him or not, like I do when making any voting (or deciding not to vote) decision. But so?

And as for the Presidency, I really don't think that anyone who REALLY opposes the empire and the security apparatus can ever get the presidency (in fact it's doubtful whether they can become Senator …).

So … the country is becoming a dictatorship and hoping for political leaders to arise to save us from this won't. I don't know entirely what might, but I know that won't.

This was a great article Justin. I admit I stopped reading you for a while because to me it seemed like you began to turn out different stories every few days but all on the same topic. There was a period like that in December/January with Chuck Hagel and then again in June/July with Edward Snowden. I can't be the only one to have noticed but now you're back to doing interesting articles all on different topics like the excellent Korean War one. I bought Reclaiming the Right and Enemy of the State so you still have this reader's support. Keep up the good work Justin.

The 9/11 attack was carried out by hijackers (mostly) from Saudi Arabia upset about U.S. military bases in their country. Yet, the government of Saudi Arabia, unlike those of Iran and Syria, is considered an ally of the United States because it obeys its U.S. masters. This fact is completely ignored by Christie (and politicians in general), which exposes his concern for "the widows and the orphans" as disingenuous. Of course the attack was morally indefensible, but if you are looking for a political policy to blame, it is the maintenance of the U.S. empire, and not the "riffraff of the world."

Exactly by what mechanism do you propose those in authority be selected for their lack of selfishness? If there aren't free people who can't be trusted to "care who starves in the streets," why do you trust those that would deny people freedom to be compassionate?

Or are you merely hoping for some mystical or Marxian transformation of society whereby the wants of the individual become indistinguishable from the wants of the collective?

I am not proposing anything – I am just explaining why I no longer get excited over "libertarianism". Libertarianism these days is all about celebrating capitalism, the so-called "free market", and exploiting something or someone.
Well, Sam; capitalism is no longer working (what is our GDP these days – very low single digits?); our country is corrupt beyond reversal; and the "free market" is free – for crooks. And I no longer hope for a damn thing regarding this country until someone comes up with a better system and libertarianism ain't it.

I'm sorry Justin but I have to agree with Thomas on this one. Love your writings but I think fighting this war on their terms (through politics) is waste of time and effort. You can't wield the ring of power and expect to not get seduced by it. Politics is THE most corrupt occupation in history. I just don't see how it's possible to take the Black Death and transform it into some kind of tool of liberty.

I'm curious what Rand is going to do since the establishment has had Christie sit on him after a well connected political whore attacked him. I'd rather see Rand stick to the facts than flail around. He can say that he supports the constitution and our laws regarding coups. If interventionist want to support terrorist in Syria, give funds to military coups, start wars, and end the 4th amendment so they can spy on Americans then they should do so within American legal structure. The US didn't end the 18th amendment by ignoring it. America didn't fight Hitler without a declaration of war. The burden isn't on Rand Paul but his attackers. There is no evidence concerning an Iranian nuclear weapon. All the information Rand needs to defend himself on policy is out there. He can either kiss Christie's enormous behind, or deflect the attacks back onto the attackers without pandering or being a caricature.

[…] this subset of losers is New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has attacked libertarianism as “a dangerous thought,” and whose habit of arranging epic traffic jams in retaliation against his political opponents […]

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].